Princess of Wisdom: An Epic Fantasy Series (Wisdom Saga Book 2)

by W. C. Conner

  Eldred stood before the brotherhood of Wisdom wizards and called for silence.

  “I know you’re all aware that our newly revealed young wizard, Allen, has discovered the place that Gregory confined the darkness he collected. In this discovery, several things have been revealed: First, Gregory is not a Lesser Wizard as we had supposed. He is clearly a Great Wizard of considerable power, although I suspect that he was not aware of it himself. Those of you who accompanied us to the opening saw that it was clearly too small for a man of Gregory’s size to enter unless he was able to either transport himself into the cave, or to shrink himself through the use of his magic. Either of those indicates a wizard of exceptional potential.

  “Second, Gregory has been traveling the path of the wizard Waldron who became Greyleige. That is apparent from a vision Allen had of him after he found the darkness in which a malevolence hidden deep within him was revealed as he worked his spell of binding on the dark mass. While I’m certain that in his own mind he was doing this from the purest of intentions; in reality, it was the dark force of revenge that drove him.

  “Finally, from what Allen has told me, the spell of binding Gregory placed upon the mass of darkness he collected is holding strongly; so strongly, in fact, that it is beyond us to do anything with it. It is far beyond our powers to sustain or undo his spell. I feel the best we could hope to accomplish is to try to seal any exits to the chamber in which it is held.”

  “Do you really believe that would contain it if the binding spell of a Great Wizard should fail?” called a voice from the back.

  “No, Tremaine, I do not, but I have no other alternative. Wilton would be the only wizard I know of who might be able to handle it. But, for the present at least, he is restricted to the Old Forest. My sense is that, should Gregory’s spell fail, any sealing we could effect would only slow it down, at best.” There was a long moment of silence following Eldred’s assessment.

  “Sir?” Allen said hesitantly, half raising his hand as he did. All heads turned toward the newly revealed young wizard. “Would it not serve to seal the entrance and then fuse the entire chamber and its portal with wizard’s fire? Surely there is enough potential within our community to generate enough wizard’s fire to do that much.”

  “From the mouths of babes,” Eldred said over the murmur that erupted at the young wizard’s suggestion.

  “Let us go to our homes and regenerate, brothers. Later tonight we will have a great task to perform. Everyone must attend.”

  19

  Prince Gleneagle stood on the high ground at almost the exact spot his command center had been four years earlier when Wil had faced Greyleige in his tower. He looked out at the walls of Blackstone and shivered briefly as his memories of that far gone battle replayed themselves in his mind. Morgan, gone. General Kolburn, gone. So many gone. So many good men buried in the ground over which he looked. And here he was, once again, looking at what seemed to have become the permanent focal point of evil upon the earth.

  “My Prince,” said Altamont’s son, Alarid. “I await your instructions as to the disposition of my army.”

  His reverie broken, Gleneagle turned toward the earnest young man. “Your army will flank the left side while my own army will flank the right side. Drogol has requested the dubious honor of carrying the center of the campaign, though I doubt there is any army here more capable of doing it.”

  “You have the right of that, Highness,” Alarid said as they watched Drogol’s men moving toward the closed gates of Blackstone. They did not move like an army, for there were no obvious military formations. Rather, they moved in a route step manner, spread out and undulating much like a grass fire moving across a dry field. But the set of their shoulders and the look in their eyes suggested these were men who would fight to the death without any hesitation. These definitely were men you wanted fighting beside you, not against you. And they had brought their reasons to fight with them; their families accompanied them as they always did in battle to be close to their men, close to their own deaths should their men lose.

  “Once your army is in position, Alarid, I want you back here. Drogol will join us as soon as his people are in place.”

  Bowing, Alarid mounted his horse and trotted toward his army, raising his arm as he did to bring his soldiers to attention.

  In his cell deep under Blackstone, Gregory awoke to the profound blackness that had been his world since shortly after being brought to the fortress by Styxis. It was a blackness he would never get used to. The pale glow from the leash – the symbol of the bondage in which he was held – was of no help for it illuminated nothing and was the only thing that could be seen in the blackness. Looking at it only made the frustration worse, for it aroused both the lust he felt for Styxis and the pity he felt for himself and those he had tried so hard to help.

  His ears felt as if they moved on his head as he heard shuffling and scraping at infrequent intervals just outside the door of his cell. Snuffling and hissing noises, seeming almost to suggest speech of some sort accompanied the sounds.

  Gregory jumped and pushed himself even harder against the rock wall opposite the door when a sudden and violent battle erupted directly in front of his cell. A shriek of pain and the sounds of flesh being torn apart were followed by the sound of something unsuccessfully testing the lock of the door. The rattling of the lock was replaced shortly by an animal-like sound of sniffing at the grate in the cell door. Though it made no difference in that place of total darkness, he covered his head with his arms and closed his eyes in the delusional belief it would make him invisible.

  A feeling of absolute malevolence approached on footsteps that stopped outside the door, followed immediately by the sound of bones being crushed. Whatever had been sniffing at the grate screeched in agony for several minutes as the gruesome sounds continued. When it finally went quiet outside the door once again, the footsteps disappeared in the direction from which they had come, carrying the feeling of malevolence away with them.

  Then, silence. Total, profound silence.

  Gregory laughed softly. This had to be a dream. He would awake shortly. He had to awake shortly or he would go mad. He laughed a little harder, the sound a comfort to him. Laughter in this place of horror was a comfort. He would laugh until the horror ceased to exist. So he laughed, and he laughed, and he wept.

  At the center of Blackstone, Styxis materialized in the midst of the undulating black tube as it drew slowly down toward the ground. She stood with her hands held over her head as if beckoning to the heavens and absorbed the darknesses the black tube swept from the sky.

  The entire time the maelstrom had raged, demons of every description had been thrown violently out of the unnatural tornado. As they landed, they turned their burning eyes first toward Styxis in adoration, then toward the darkness-touched in hunger.

  Gregory laughed hysterically in his cell beneath Styxis’s feet as the darkness-touched backed away from the demons, sensing even in their hate-possessed minds that Styxis had herded them together not to fight, but as food. They surged in a mindless mass, hitting and biting at one another, pushing the smaller and weaker women and children toward the outside of the packed bodies in their attempts to work their way to a safe place in the herd.

  Styxis watched them with undisguised erotic anticipation. She knew the throbbing burning in her loins would be relieved multiple times as she watched the gory slaughter of the darkness-touched and she trembled in her excitement.

  She closed her eyes, visualizing the slaughter she was about to release when she suddenly and violently staggered back as if struck by a fist. A high pitched shriek sounded briefly and Styxis clutched her hand to her chest as if experiencing great pain.

  At the crossroads, Wil’s white bolt of power had just vaporized her demon.

  “No!” she screeched as a wisp of purplish vapor streaked into the sky above her. “He cannot have destroyed you!” She sank to her knees, her head raised toward the sky as she screamed alo
ud in white hot rage and frustration.

  The demons, released from the restraint of her control, looked about uncertainly for the briefest moment before leaping toward the darkness-touched who cowered at Styxis’s rage. As the demons tore into them, the darkness-touched at last reacted and turned to run toward the closed gates of Blackstone. The foremost of them threw the massive bolts and pulled the gates open as those at the back were attacked by the rapacious demons.

  The leaders of the armies spread out before Blackstone flinched visibly at the high pitched shriek that tore across the sky, then turned quickly to look at the fortress.

  “By all the powers,” Alarid said, fighting for control of his courage, “what in the world was that?”

  Drogol looked unperturbed, but even his courage had been tested by the unearthly sound.

  “I don’t think that noise is of our world, Alarid,” Gleneagle said, his eyes locked on the gates of Blackstone which had begun to move. “Gentlemen, I believe our test is at hand.”

  As he finished speaking, the gates of Blackstone swung unevenly inward and the darkness-touched poured forth.

  “Oh, by the powers,” Gleneagle whispered in horror, “there are women and children among them.”

  Geoffrey had been watching the entire time and, as the others mounted their horses and galloped off to join their armies, he turned to the prince. “Sire,” he said, “these are not attacking; they are fleeing.”

  Gleneagle could now see the truth of what his chamberlain had said. Closing his mind to the horror of what was about to happen, he turned to Geoffrey. “They must not be allowed back out into the world,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

  He turned back toward the desperate horde moving toward them. They had no weapons, no direction; they were simply running. But, from what?

  And then he saw them. As the last of the darkness-touched made it through the gates, the demons that were chasing them appeared.

  “Well, Geoffrey,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line, “it looks like your first taste of war is going to be of a type never before witnessed upon this earth.”

  Before them, the vanguard of the darkness-touched tore into Drogol’s warriors as Gleneagle’s and Alarid’s armies moved toward their sides. Though Drogol had volunteered to take the brunt of any attack as the center unit, Gleneagle’s and Alarid’s troops moved toward what would surely prove to be the more formidable of the creatures emerging from Blackstone, for the darkness-touched were surrounded on three sides by the pursuing demons.

  Geoffrey’s mind was whirling as he watched his Prince who, in turn, was watching the developing battle. “Highness,” he said abruptly, “call back your two flanking armies.”

  Gleneagle looked toward Geoffrey, baffled by his suggestion. “Let Drogol and the demons destroy the darkness-touched from before and behind,” Geoffrey continued. “Save your armies until that much is accomplished, at the least. You can then pinch in behind the demons and surround them.”

  “I should have brought you on my campaigns years ago,” he said as he realized the wisdom of his chamberlain’s plan. “You have the makings of a brilliant tactician.”

  Summoning two messengers on swift horses, he gave them brief instructions and sent them bolting off toward the battle.

  The darkness-touched were slaughtered quickly, though it was a messy process for they fought ferociously, whether man, woman, or child. When the carnage was done, the remains of the darkness-touched turned to putrescent vapor as had Greyleige’s army four years before and disappeared into the sky as if being sucked into an invisible mouth.

  The two flanking armies had only just started moving once again toward the demons when the creatures suddenly stopped and turned to slink back in an orderly manner toward the fortress as if they were dogs summoned by their master.

  And that is, indeed, exactly what had happened. After Styxis had overcome her anger and frustration, she had stalked along behind the chaotic throng that poured through the gates. She watched as the horde crashed into Drogol’s Northmen and shuddered in gratification at the mayhem and death happening before her upon the battlefield. The slaughter was not as close and visually vivid as she had anticipated, but she was able to find her autoerotic relief multiple times, nonetheless.

  When the flanking armies pulled back to await the destruction of the darkness-touched, she recognized the strategy and looked with interest toward the rise upon which Gleneagle stood with Geoffrey. Her eyebrow arched in recognition at the sight of the chamberlain. She reached out with her senses and touched his essence.

  You sniffed at black magics many years ago, old man, she thought. I know you.

  The slaughter was done and Styxis’s blood lust had been sated as well as could happen from this distance. She smiled in satisfaction as she turned to walk back through the gates. Behind her, the demons felt her summons and withdrew quickly back to Blackstone after her.

  Deep beneath the fortress, Gregory laughed madly, convinced the key to avoiding insanity lay in that laughter.

  20

  A full moon lay over the encampment on the road just past the turn-off to Wrensfalls. It was the time of the night when the sentries normally had difficulty maintaining their watchfulness and often nodded off, but since the attack by the demon horde at the crossroads, the sentries had been too jittery to nap and those now on duty flinched at every creaking branch and animal sound in the night.

  Inside her tent, Caron lay on her side. Roland’s arm lay over her, resting on her stomach where their son grew day by day. In turn, Caron’s arm lay across the talisman. Its nearness was a comfort to her and she was loathe to have it far from her side.

  Her eyes moved behind her lids as her mind came awake inside her sleeping body. A presence was probing at her. She could feel the presence as it seemed to sniff her essence to learn what it could of her, much as one dog might identify another. At first the probing was tentative and she felt no threat, but the probing seemingly went deeper and deeper into her and her fear awoke as a thought invaded her mind.

  You are only a portal, elf witch. I want that which you hold.

  At that moment, Wil’s consciousness came awake within her. Close your mind, Caron, came his thought. Close yourself to this touch. It is evil.

  From far away came a thought, dripping with the promise of pain and agony. I know who you are. Why do you exist? I believed you had been destroyed along with that weakling, Greyleige.

  At first, Caron thought the voice was talking to her, but she quickly realized it was talking through her to Wil. She could feel the presence pressing to get past her, to get directly to Wil, and she pushed back against the violation of her mind. As the presence attempted to intrude deeper, Caron felt the pressure from Wil suddenly rise until the presence relented.

  You have grown strong indeed, came the thought.

  You have no idea how strong I have become, Wil responded, yet I am still in my infancy. I no longer channel the power that defeated you. I am the power that defeated you.

  It was a moment before the presence responded. Do you know my name?

  I have no desire to know your name, foul one.

  The image of an impossibly beautiful woman appeared, naked and desirable to all who beheld her, whether man or woman. Caron found herself unable to turn her thoughts away from the image that floated in her mind. She cried out inside herself, Protect me! but was met only with the laughter of the presence.

  I am Styxis, the presence announced. Behold me and despair!

  Caron could feel the warmth growing in her loins as her attention focused more and more on the image in her mind. Her hand moved from under the blankets and she began to reach out, desperate to touch this sensuous, wanton vision. As she did, she felt a sharp stab of pain in her forehead.

  Caron, Wil commanded, focus on me. Focus on Roland. Focus on anything but this great whore from a damned world.

  At that command, she felt a shock as if she had been hit by a wall of air, and the presen
ce was gone. There was a long moment in which Caron anticipated a renewal of the attack, but none came.

  What was she, Wil? Caron thought.

  That was who you will defeat, Caron, Wil returned. We know now that this demon is a she, and she now knows us. She does not fear us as she should, but she will.

  As Wil’s voice faded, Caron came fully awake at the gentle shaking of her shoulder and Roland’s voice in her ear.

  “You’re dreaming again, Caron. You were calling out in your sleep.”

  Without a word, Caron rolled over and took Roland in her arms. Putting her head into the hollow of his shoulder, she stopped fidgeting and her breathing became deep and even as she dropped immediately back to sleep.

  Roland kissed the side of her head and shifted his shoulders to a more comfortable position before falling back to sleep himself.

  In the stone cottage at the center of the Old Forest, Wil lay on his bed following his confrontation with Styxis, his good arm lying across his chest.

  I did not want to hear her name, he thought as he started the slide down into the regenerative wizard’s sleep, so very necessary following his rejection of Styxis’s attempt to intrude into him through Caron.

  In his tent on the rise overlooking the plain before Blackstone, Geoffrey’s eyes moved rapidly back and forth beneath his closed lids. His hands moved up before his face as he mumbled in his sleep.

  “No,” he said, “I can’t. You have no power over me. I am too old to be bought that way. No. Go away.” He thrashed about in his bedding as he mumbled, fighting the assault on his mind. “You are an abomination offering yourself as love personified, but you are only lust. Without love, you are to be shunned.